


Things That Go Bump in the Night

by ClawR



Series: Together with Remembrance of Ourselves [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Making Things Worse, Hurt/Spectacularly Failed Attempts at Comfort, POV Female Character, canon-compliant through season 3b, canon-inspired but not canon-compliant for season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2076264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClawR/pseuds/ClawR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Malia fall in love, get together, and break up. Not in that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things That Go Bump in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> You know how people say that a fic ate their brain? I've been writing my whole life, and I've been pretty obsessed with whatever I was working on, but never before has something eaten my brain. Until now. I wrote this thing while listening to two songs ("Feel Real" by Deptford Goth and "9 Crimes" by Damien Rice), and I don't think it would be an exaggeration to guess that I listened to each one upwards of 300 times before I finished.
> 
> There's some potentially triggery stuff in here, especially if you're particularly sensitive to consent issues, so please see the end notes for more detailed (and spoilery) warnings if you're concerned.
> 
> Also, it's probably fair to warn you guys that this fic is not exactly Stiles' finest hour. He's absolutely not the bad guy, but he does some pretty stupid things. And because of the point of view, I could only imply his reasoning, rather than being able to spell it out. (I am, in fact, considering a companion piece from his point of view for that very reason--but I think I'll give myself a break from Teen Wolf fic, first.) Just know that I adore Stiles, and the only reason he acts the way he does in this fic is that he's hurting just as badly as Malia is.

_She runs through the woods, her paws treading lightly on the twigs and stones and underbrush, her tail flying out in her wake. The air smells like cold and prey, and like another, younger coyote._

_The younger coyote is running next to her. It’s Leanne, she realizes. She runs faster, and Leanne scurries after her, trying to keep up like she always does. They leap together over a stream, and on the other side, Molly the doll is sitting, propped against a mossy fallen tree. Leanne picks Molly up with her muzzle, and together the three of them, Malia and Leanne and Molly, run and run and never get tired._

Malia wakes up with a wet face and a queasy stomach. She closes her eyes immediately, trying to get back to the dream, but sleep won’t return.

“Hey,” says Stiles, quiet. He puts a hand on her arm and helps her roll onto her side so they’re lying face to face. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

It’s not okay. Malia reaches over Stiles and snatches a condom from the box on the bedside table, and drops it on his chest. Stiles picks it up and stares at it like he hasn’t used one twenty or thirty times before.

“Look, maybe we should…” he starts, but Malia cuts him off with a kiss. She doesn’t want words; words only remind her of her guilt. When she gets like this, she wants more than anything to not think at all, and sex is the closest thing she knows to that. Soft or rough, slow or fast, successful or not—and she and Stiles have had a lot of pretty unsuccessful sex—it always keeps her completely, undistractably _there_. She used to watch the other coyotes mate, in the woods, used to rebuff the advances of young males, and she always wondered what she was missing.

Now she knows, and she’s glad she’s not missing it anymore.

“Okay,” Stiles says, when she pulls away. “I guess we should do this.”

He pulls off his shirt, and Malia crawls over to straddle him. She runs her hand down his chest, stopping when she hits the faint but significant scar that crawls across his stomach—a remnant, she knows, of the Nogitsune. She bends over and kisses a little line along it.

Stiles squirms under her. “Hey, stop that,” he says. He pushes her gently at her head. “Stop.”

Malia tilts her head away from his hands and grins up at him. She can stop, no problem. Kissing isn’t really what she was interested in, anyway.

#

It’s lucky Malia’s an early riser, because most days, she has to get up at 5 a.m. to sneak out of Stiles’ room and back into her own, so that she can eat breakfast with her dad before Stiles picks her up in front of her house at seven. Or rather, 6:45, today.

“Madam,” he says, hopping out of the Jeep to hold the passenger door open for her. “Your chariot.”

She smiles as he gets back in the driver’s side. “My chariot is early.”

“Yeah, we’re picking up Lydia on the way in. Her car’s brakes are acting funny.”

Malia frowns. Apparently Stiles notices—not that she’d tried very hard to hide it—because he quirks an eyebrow as he throws the Jeep into reverse. “What? You have a problem with Lydia?”

“No,” she says. “I just don’t feel like getting quizzed on pre-calc before I’ve even gotten to school.”

“She won’t do that,” Stiles says. “She only does that when she’s tutoring you. This is just hanging out. As friends.”

The first thing Lydia says when she slides into the backseat five minutes later is, “Hey, Malia! How’s that SOHCAHTOA worksheet coming along?”

Malia doesn’t actually _say_ “I told you so,” but she does think it very loudly in Stiles’ direction, and she’s pretty sure he gets the message.

Lydia lets up after that, though, and Malia sinks back into her seat, letting her and Stiles carry the conversation, which is about Scott and Kira and their endless courtship dance that Malia has no patience for. It’s the first time Malia’s been with Stiles and Lydia when she hasn’t had to focus her full attention on something else, like math homework or controlling her coyote instincts, and that’s probably why she notices now, for the first time, the way Stiles’ pupils dilate when he glances at Lydia in the rearview mirror. The way his heart beats a little faster.

“Oh,” she says, cutting off whatever Lydia was about to say. “You’re attracted to her.”

Lydia and Stiles both turn to stare at her for a moment, broken only when Stiles narrowly avoids running into the car in front of him and jerks his gaze back to the road.

“Malia, you can’t just… you can’t just _say_ things like that,” he says.

“What?” she says. “You are!”

“No, I’m not,” he says quickly. His heart’s beating too fast to tell lies from truths, but this particular lie is so badly told that Malia doesn’t need to listen for it. Stiles glances at Lydia. “I’m not.”

Malia looks at Lydia, who’s now staring out the window so hard, a fire could probably break out inside the car and she wouldn’t turn around. She’s pretty sure that Lydia knows that Stiles is attracted to her, so why would Stiles lie? Unless…

“Oh, it’s okay,” Malia says. “I don’t mind.”

“What?” Stiles yelps.

“It’s natural for you to be attracted to other girls. I mean, coyotes don’t stick with one mate, usually, not for life, anyway. It doesn’t bother me.”

Stiles stops at a red light and briefly rests his forehead against the steering wheel. “I’m not going to be mating with anyone else,” he mumbles.

“Okay,” Malia says, settling back into her seat. It really makes no difference to her.

Besides, she can tell Lydia doesn’t like him back.

#

“How have you been sleeping?” Ms. Morrell asks. It’s “Ms. Morrell” here, not “Marin” like it was in Eichen House. Malia doesn’t mind the change. Of the many rules they want her to remember, a new name is one of the easiest.

“Well,” Malia says, gruff and short.

Ms. Morrell shifts her weight smoothly onto one elbow, settled on the armrest of her chair. Casual interest, that’s what she’s trying to show. Anyway, that’s what Malia thinks she’s trying to show. “You don’t sound pleased by that.”

“I’m not,” Malia says, and then, knowing that Ms. Morrell is more interested in the why than anything else, she goes on. “When I was a coyote, I slept light. It was like I always had one ear open for anything that might come my way. But now that I’m back to human, I’ve lost that. I sleep so deep, anything could happen and I wouldn’t know it.”

“That must be scary.”

It is. It’s part of why she sleeps with Stiles every night she can. Coyotes aren’t pack animals, not really, not the way wolves are, but they understand about safety in numbers. Twice the people means twice the chances to be woken by the things that go bump in the night.

She doesn’t say that out loud. Stiles drilled it in her head first thing that she shouldn’t broadcast their sleepovers to adults.

“I’m used to scary,” she says instead.

#

Stiles is waiting for her outside Ms. Morrell’s office. They set off together for history, Stiles slowing down his steps for her. She knows he does that, because she’s seen him walk normally, twitching and rushed, when he’s alone or with Scott or Lydia, and she hasn’t joined the group yet.

“Bump in the night,” she says, “bump in the night. Where do I know that from?”

“It’s a cliché,” Stiles says. “You’ve probably heard it a bunch of places.”

“Bump in the night,” she repeats, putting her fingers over lips so she can feel them making the words. It’s a trip, having lips again.

Stiles, who gave up on relieving her of this quirk weeks ago, glances over his shoulder at Ms. Morrell’s office. “How do you stand her?”

“I like her,” Malia says. “She’d do well as a coyote.”

“It’s not her wilderness survival skills I take issue with so much as her general ruthlessness and loose grip on morality.”

“Like I said. She’d make a good coyote.”

Stiles throws his head back laughing. Malia wasn’t joking, exactly, but she likes making Stiles laugh. She likes it when she stumbles into helping him, because she sure doesn’t know how to do it on purpose.

“Is she… I mean, does it help, talking to her?” Stiles asks.

Malia shrugs. Nothing really _helps_ , and she thinks Stiles knows that. “It was part of the deal, when I left Eichen House.”

Stiles nods and looks away, and Malia crosses her arms, digging her nails into her sleeves. She feels like there’s some subtext here that she’s missing, something Stiles is trying to say without saying, or doesn’t want to say but is saying anyway. She wishes he would just… _say_ it.

The uncertainty of it all stresses her out, and so does the silence, so she changes the subject to the first thing she can think of, something she’d been wondering about the night before.

“Why do Derek’s eyes flash blue and Scott’s eyes flash red?”

Stiles glances at her, but doesn’t comment on the sudden new direction of the conversation. “Because Scott’s an alpha.”

“So alphas have red eyes and everyone else has blue?”

Stiles reaches out and lets his fingers trail over the closed lockers as they walk past. His heart is speeding and skipping and bumping, almost in time with his fingertips. He smells stressed. But then, he almost always smells stressed. “No,” he says after a moment. “Some betas have eyes that are more… amber, I guess.”

“Why the difference?”

His eyes follow his fingers along the wall, turned away so she can’t see them. “There’s no real difference. It’s just a kind of genetic thing.”

“Oh,” she says.

Stiles knocks the lockers with his knuckles once, twice, three times, and looks back at her. “Hey, are you going to Lydia’s for tutoring tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you actually going, or are you going to skip like you did last time?”

Now it’s Malia’s turn to look away. “I didn’t _skip_ , I just… had other things to do.”

Stiles sighs. “Malia.”

“I know,” she says. “I know.” It’s not that she doesn’t want to go to tutoring—she does, she wants to learn everything. It’s just that sometimes, when she looks at the gap between what she knows and what Lydia knows, it all seems impossible. It makes her want to curl up into her coyote form and never, ever come back out. That no longer being an option, she’d spent the two hours she was supposed to be at Lydia’s house in the woods, instead.

“Just go tonight, will you?” Stiles says. “Please?”

“Yeah, all right, I’ll go.”

“And thank Lydia, after. Manners!”

Malia rolls her eyes and gently shoves Stiles into the wall of lockers. But when she leaves Lydia’s that night, she remembers to say “thank you.”

#

Malia and her father sit across the table from each other, silent. It was the tenth silent dinner like this that sent Malia to Eichen House, when her father asked her why she wouldn’t speak, and she answered that nothing was real anyway, so why would she?

Back then—only a couple months ago—it _hadn’t_ felt real, eating dinner with her father. Tables and chairs and knives and forks and chicken parmesan had seemed like furnishings in a doll house, like ridiculous toys dreamed up to distract from the cold and hunger and guilt that were the only real things in the world.

Now, she doesn’t speak because there’s only one thing worth saying, and no way to say it.

Her father spins the last bite of microwaved pasta primavera around his fork, and she practices in her head: _It was me, Dad. I killed Mom and Leanne. I killed them when I turned into a coyote._

She opens her mouth, and nothing comes out.

Her father finishes and glances at her half-eaten pasta.

“You done?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. She doesn’t like pasta much, not because of the taste but because she can’t quite master the trick of winding it onto the fork. Being a werecoyote comes with strength, speed, and reflexes, but apparently not table manners.

Her father nods and carries both their plates to the sink. Malia watches the muscles of his shoulders working beneath his worn-out shirt as he rinses the dishes, sending the sharp scent of bell peppers and tomatoes and the rich, smooth smell of olive oil spiraling down the drain. She thinks about her father’s flat grey eyes.

As soon as she gets up to her room, she calls Stiles.

“Aren’t you going to be over in like, two hours?” he says when he picks up.

“I thought of something,” she says. “I mean, I’d already thought of it before, but I really _thought_ of it just now, in a way I can’t ignore. You know?”

“Actually, yes. What is it?”

“Well, you were talking earlier about werewolf eyes, and how the color is like a genetic thing. And I thought, well, shapeshifting is like a genetic thing too, right? Like, werewolves are either born or bitten. And I wasn’t bitten, so I must have been born like this.”

“That follows, yeah.” Malia can’t quite put her finger on it, but she thinks there’s something off about Stiles’ voice.

“But is that even possible?” she says. “I mean, neither of my parents are werewolves, or werecoyotes, or anything. So is it like _Harry Potter_ , like two Muggles can have a wizard kid?”

“You know about _Harry Potter_?”

“I’ve been living in the woods, not dead. The point is, can it happen? Two normal people giving birth to a werewolf?”

“You think you might be adopted,” Stiles says, flat. There’s _definitely_ something off about his voice, but without scent and body language to help, Malia can’t even begin to guess what it is. She was going to ask Stiles to help her figure out the mystery of her parentage, but this new _thing_ , this whatever-it-is, stops her. Maybe she’s upsetting Stiles; maybe she’s boring him; maybe it’s some other, strange problem that she’d never think of in a million years. Whatever it is, it’s more mysterious to her than werewolf genetics, and she doesn’t want to talk about this subject with him until it goes away.

“It’s a thought, anyway,” she says. “I’ll see you later.”

When she climbs in Stiles’ window later that night, he doesn’t mention the phone call, and she’s too relieved to be bothered.

#

They’re reading _Hamlet_ out loud in English class. Malia is not big on Shakespeare. She was ahead of the curve, before the change, reading at about an eighth grade level, and she’s picked back up on it quickly—she’s almost up to her grade level, now—but connotations and unspoken implications are hard for her. She can hardly work through the subtext of books written in modern English; Shakespeare’s plays are mostly just noise to her. She likes the stories well enough, when Lydia breaks them down for her, but Lydia says that with Shakespeare, the plot isn’t the point.

Listening to a bunch of 16-year-olds stumble over the Bard’s words isn’t exactly helping the matter. (That’s how Lydia refers to him: The Bard.) The saving grace is Stiles, who shares the class with Malia and Scott. Lydia used to be in the class with them, apparently, but she started taking AP English, this semester. Stiles was supposed to join her, but after he missed a month of classes, he transferred into the easier track in a few subjects, to stay on course for graduation. Stiles is by far the best reader in the class, never tripping over words, never second-guessing his pronunciation. He reads with a drawl, but he also reads with _inflection_ , which is more than Malia can say for the rest of her classmates’ halting monotones. Malia could listen to Stiles read Shakespeare for hours. She doesn’t understand the words any better when he says them, but she loves the rough sound of his throat pushing out vowels, the way his voice drops from sharp and nasal to round and reedy when he says _hitherto_ , the way his confident delivery makes the iambic pentameter sound like paws hitting the forest floor at a run. 

Stiles always gets the meatiest, wordiest parts to read, and today, that makes him Hamlet. Scott is Horatio; Malia is Ophelia. “Someone’s feeling clever today,” Stiles had muttered when Mr. Evans handed out the parts. The statement was such a mystery to Malia that she couldn’t even begin to respond to it, so she’d taken Stiles’ hand under their desks and woven their fingers together, instead.

With Stiles’ hand in her hand and his voice in her ears, Malia is as happy as she can remember being. She props her chin on her free hand and watches his lips form and reform around the words.

“O most pernicious woman!” Stiles reads, with enthusiasm. “O villain, villain, smiling damned villain! My tables—meet it is I set it down, that one may…”

He breaks off, sudden. The rest of the class, who had mostly been dozing with their eyes open, tunes back in for a moment to look at him. Stiles coughs and tries again.

“That one may smile…”

Stiles’ heart is slamming against his ribs. Stress, so much a part of his scent that Malia hardly notices it anymore, is suddenly all she can smell. His grip on her hand tightens to the point of pain.

“That one may smile, and smile…”

The class is awake, now, and staring. Scott leans over from Stiles’ other side, and says, so low only those with supernatural senses can hear, “Stiles.”

“That one may,” Stiles says, more breath than words, and then he bolts from the room. Scott follows so quickly that he nearly beats Stiles to the door.

Malia stares after them, and then back at her whispering, tittering classmates. She is frozen in indecision. Should she follow Scott and Stiles? Should she stay in class? What’s the protocol, here? Then it makes it through to her brain: _Something is wrong with Stiles_. She grabs her backpack and leaves the room, following the trail of fear to the locker room.

Stiles is bent over, grasping at the row of lockers to keep himself off the ground, breathing so fast he’s practically not breathing at all. Scott hovers over him, not quite touching, like Stiles’ skin is poisonous, or like he’s liable to catch on fire at any moment.

“It’s okay, Stiles, it’s okay, just breath, okay, just breath…”

Malia stops a foot into the room and hangs back. The air is sharp with fear from Stiles and Scott both, so thick she has to breathe through her mouth. “What’s wrong with him?”

Scott spares half a second to glance over his shoulder at her before returning his focus to Stiles. “Panic attack,” he says. “Stiles, look at me, come on, look at my eyes.”

But Stiles isn’t looking at Scott; he’s looking at Malia.

“It’s… it’s okay,” Stiles says, his words sped up so he can get them out between gasps. “I’m fine, Malia, just… just go back to class.”

Malia takes half a step forward. “You don’t seem fine.”

Stiles opens his mouth to say something else, but he can’t seem to get the words out. He clutches at his throat with his free hand.

“Stiles!” Malia says, taking a few more steps toward him.

Scott whirls around and glares at her. “He’s going to be fine, but I need him to focus on me. So either do something helpful, shut up, or just _go_.” 

The last word is tinged with Scott’s alpha voice. After one last moment’s hesitation, Malia succumbs to her instincts and runs from the room.

#

“It was a panic attack,” Stiles tells her that night, when they’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on his bed. “Nothing wrong with me that wasn’t in my head. I used to get them a lot. Well. I guess it’s not really a past-tense kind of thing anymore.”

“Why do you get them?” she asks.

“I don’t…” He huffs and runs a hand through his hair. “It’s a pretty common reaction to grief.”

“Your mom.”

“Yeah.”

“And now… Allison?”

“I guess.” Stiles quirks one corner of his mouth upward. “Allison and, y’know. Everything else.”

Everything else. All the people he killed, and the monster inside him, and the terrible, crushing guilt. Malia can imagine it sucking the breath from her lungs. She can see how that could happen.

Stiles turns toward her, his mouth still pulled into a half-smile, and something surges up in Malia’s stomach, something softer and cleaner and kinder than guilt. It pushes her forward until she is kissing him. He doesn’t respond at first, but she lies down on her back, pulling him down on top of her, and finally he clings to her shoulders and kisses her back.

Afterward, as Stiles drops off to sleep inside her arms, he mumbles into his pillow. “From ghoulies and ghosties, long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us.”

“What’s that?” she whispers.

“Scottish prayer. 1926. One of the first recorded uses of the phrase.”

He falls asleep after that. But Malia stays awake, her head buzzing with memories of the day’s events, her stomach queasy with guilt. Stiles is always working with her on being “other-regarding,” on thinking about how her words and actions affect people. There’s no one she regards more than Stiles. But today, when he _needed_ some kind of words or actions from her, she’d had nothing. She’d just stood there. She’d wanted to help him, but she hadn’t known what to do—she never does.

When it gets so bad that it feels like the acid might burn its way out of her stomach, Malia gets out of bed, careful not to disturb Stiles. She could go home, but she won’t feel less guilty there. She could study, but she’s sick of studying. Instead, she finds herself sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at the titles on the little bookshelf in the corner of Stiles’ room.

The top shelves are boring. _Star Wars_ expanded universe novels, the full _Harry Potter_ series, a set of colorful books with small text by someone called Terry Pratchett. Malia flips through a couple of books from the first row, but other than _Harry Potter_ , nothing holds her interest much more than Shakespeare. They all smell good, though. Comforting. Further down, though, the books start to change. There’s less fiction. When she opens the books on the bottom shelf, she finds highlighted passages and notes scribbled in the margins, and the pages smell sour and shiny, like glue.

Malia traces her finger along the bottom shelves, starting on the left and working her way up and to the right. _The ADD & ADHD Answer Book. The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind. On Death and Dying. The Other Side of Sadness. Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders. The DSM IV-TR. Werewolves: Lore and Legend._ And at the very far right, _Myths & Truths About Coyotes._

Malia knows enough about Stiles’ life to realize that this is his research library. His whole life, dating back years, whenever he’s encountered a problem, he’s researched it until he knows everything he can about it, and then he’s put the books here. This shelf is the history of Stiles.

 _I need a history of Malia_ , she thinks.

She opens Stiles’ laptop, enters the complicated password he’d given her during their first study session, and googles: “how to tell if you’re adopted.”

#

By 5 p.m. the next day, Malia has three resources to help her in her search: a list of physical indicators of genetic relationships, printed from the Internet in the school’s computer lab; a beginning genetics textbook, checked out of the school library; and a copy of her birth certificate, dug, after a long, dusty, sneeze-filled search, out of a shoebox in her attic.

The birth certificate announces that Malia Josephine Tate was born at 5:16 pm on April 3, 1996, in Beacon Hills, California, to Donna Mayhew Tate and Joseph Sterling Tate. This is not the hard evidence she’d hoped it would be; another hour’s googling had informed her that adoptive parents were generally issued an updated birth certificate with their names on it, and there was really no way to tell whether this certificate was her original one or not. Still, she stares at it for a long time after she finds it, tracing her mother’s name with her finger, holding the gilded edges up to her nose and breathing the scent of dust and old paper.

The way she sees it, there are three likely scenarios. One, Stiles was wrong, and humans can have werewolf children, and both of her parents are really her parents. Two, her parents adopted her from some werecoyote family, and never told her. Three, her mother had an affair with a were-something, and Malia is the product of that.

She thinks that if either of the first options is true, she’ll maybe, eventually, find a way to tell her dad about everything. If it’s the last one… If her dad isn’t really her dad, and he doesn’t know… Well, Malia wants to know anyway.

For the next week, Malia narrows her world to genetics. She reads the textbook in between classes, in the bleachers during lacrosse practice, in the short times between clearing the table after another silent dinner with her father and sneaking out her bedroom window to visit Stiles. She spends study hall reading Gregor Mendel’s Wikipedia page, the whole thing, even the useless parts about his stupid monastery. She stops doing her homework, stops reading the novels Stiles has lent her, and—much to Lydia’s annoyance—stops paying attention during tutoring.

“Malia,” Lydia says one evening, jolting Malia out of a daydream about pea blossoms. She snaps her fingers in front of Malia’s face. “Hey! Malia! Focus!”

Malia grabs Lydia’s fingers and holds them still. “Don’t _snap_ at me,” she says, in her very best growl.

Lydia rolls her eyes. “Like I’m scared of you.” She jerks her head in the direction of the back door, where Stiles is waiting outside, waving through the in-set window. “Your ride’s here.”

Lydia helps Malia gather her things and walks her on the door. Outside on the stoop, standing next to Stiles, Malia turns back to thank Lydia for her time—even if today, it was mostly wasted.

Before she can talk, Stiles elbows her. “Say thank you, Malia.”

She elbows him back, a lot harder. “I was going to,” she says, and stalks off.

#

“Are you cold, Malia?” Ms. Morell nods at Malia’s shivering shoulders.

“I’m always cold.” Malia folds her arms together, trapping as much body heat as she can. “You’re telling me you haven’t noticed before?”

Ms. Morell smiles. “There always seemed to be more pressing things to talk about.”

“It’s just me missing the fur coat,” Malia says. Ms. Morell says nothing, just keeps smiling, like she knows something Malia doesn’t. “That is all it is, right? It’s not like some freaky magic thing, is it?”

“Relax,” Ms. Morell says. “It’s not some freaky magic thing. But I don’t think it’s the fur coat, either.”

“Then what is it?”

“My guess is that it’s psychosomatic.”

Malia thinks back to some of the gibberish she’s heard Lydia spout. “Psycho… You think I’m making it up?” she says, affronted.

“No, I’m sure you do feel cold. I just think the cold is a sign of something else going on.”

“Something like what?”

“The best way to figure that out is to find the exceptions. When don’t you feel cold? When do you feel warm?

Malia’s first thought is Stiles. Sometimes, late at night, when she’s curled around him, he heats her straight through. He warms like one of the chemical packets her mom used to tuck into her and Leanne’s mittens on the coldest days of the year.

But then she thinks some more, and she finds herself back in her attic, staring at her birth certificate and breathing in dust. And she thinks that in the attic, she didn’t need anything to warm her at all. The attic wasn’t cold.

#

Malia’s taken to researching her parentage at night, while Stiles is asleep. It’s not as easy for her to fall asleep here as it used to be, so on the nights when she lies awake after Stiles has already drifted off, she gets out of bed and curls up in a corner with her genetics textbook.

She thinks she’s finally starting to get the hang of genetics. The basics, anyway. It’s a good thing Stiles gave her a package of green highlighters a while back, because she’s finally getting some use out of them. She leans back against the wall of Stiles’ bedroom and highlights a paragraph about Punnett squares. It’s against the rules to highlight library books, but Malia sees Stiles do it all the time, so she’s not concerned.

The problem with genetics is that the more she learns, the more she realizes how inconclusive her current information is. Her dad has grey eyes—recessive. Malia has brown eyes—dominant. But her mom had had brown eyes too, so that doesn’t prove anything. Plus, additional research on Wikipedia had told her that eye color was more complicated than her beginner’s textbook was letting on. The same went for hair texture (she and her parents all had straight hair), hair color (brown, brown, and brown), dimples, hitchhiker’s thumb…

How is it possible that having more information is making her _more_ confused?

She’s on the verge of throwing her highlighter across the room in frustration when she hears a noise from the bed. Not a very loud one—not anything a human would hear. But it’s perfectly clear to her. Stiles is whimpering. She listens closer, and hears his heartbeat starting to speed up. The acidic scent of fear drifts through the room.

She thinks, _nightmare_ , and at that exact moment, Stiles’ eyes open.

He takes one deep gasp of air, like he’s finally opening his mouth after holding his breath for too long, and his heart speeds up some more. Salt and ammonia mix in with the fear-smell, and when Malia squints, she sees the moonlight reflecting off of tears on Stiles’ face.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

Stiles flails and jerks his head in her direction, like he’s just noticed she’s not in bed.

“I’m fine,” he says. He puts his hand to his face and pulls it away wet. “I’m fine, I’m just…”

Malia pushes her textbook and highlighter into her backpack and crosses the room with coyote quickness. She crawls into bed and wraps her arms around Stiles.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to be fine.”

Stiles has never had a nightmare before, at least not while she was there, but Malia remembers his panic attack. She’s not going to be useless like that again. This time, she’s going to help him.

She pulls his head toward her and kisses him with clear intent.

Stiles pulls away. “Malia…”

Malia grabs a condom from the bedside table. She keeps it clutched in her hand as she pushes Stiles down against the bed.

“Malia, stop it,” Stiles says, pushing himself to the side.

She follows him over, staying on top of him with her hands on his shoulders. “I want to make you feel better,” she says, and leans down to kiss his neck.

“This isn’t making me feel better,” Stiles says, but it will, it really will. She reaches for the waistband of his pajamas, and he grabs her wrist—not hard enough to hold her, but then, there’s no grip hard enough to hold her. “Malia, _stop_!”

The shout breaks Malia out of her single-minded focus. “You really mean that,” she says.

“Yes, I really mean that, that’s why I—” Stiles breaks off as a door creaks open down the hall. “Shit. My dad’s coming, you have to go.”

He pushes her off of him, and she sort of tumbles off the bed, scrambling away to gather her things. She pauses halfway out the window, and turns back. She’s beyond unsettled by what’s just happened, she’s confused and scared and… and a million other things she can’t name, and she can’t just leave like this.

“Stiles…”

“ _Go_ ,” Stiles says firmly. He turns his head away from her, toward his bedroom door. Malia can hear Sheriff Stilinski’s footsteps approaching, so she sucks it up and jumps out the window.

As she walks away, she hears Stiles and his father talking in the house.

“Son,” says the Sheriff. “Are you okay?”

“It’s okay, Dad,” Stiles says. “It was just a dream. I don’t even remember it.”

#

“It’s fine,” Stiles says the next morning, when Malia asks him about his nightmare. They’re at his locker; Lydia’s car is still broken, so Malia didn’t have the chance to talk to him on the ride to school. “I hardly ever get them. You don’t have to worry about it.”

But it’s not really the nightmare she’s worried about.

“What about… you know, what about what happened _after_ the nightmare?”

Stiles slams his locker shut. “What do you mean, what happened after?”

“I mean, why didn’t you want to…” she starts, but Stiles walks away in the middle of her sentence, and she has to stop so she can catch up with him.

“Stiles,” she pleads.

“I’m not _always_ in the mood,” he snaps. “That’s all.”

So she gives up. The words they’re not saying gather in the pit of her stomach, festering, but if Stiles won’t talk to her, there’s nothing she can do about it. Besides, she has too many other things to worry about. Like her genetics research, which is going nowhere.

She’s gone as far as she can get on her own. She needs help, now, a guiding hand. And it has to be from someone who will never, ever, in a million years, let it get back to Stiles.

During math class, Malia weighs her options. There’s Deaton, but she barely knows Deaton, and has no idea if he’d tell anyone what she asked him. Derek or Scott might be able to help her at least on the werewolf angle, but Derek might easily tell Stiles, and Scott _definitely_ would. Lydia could help her with the genetics, and might even be convinced to keep it a secret, but sometimes…

Sometimes, Malia sees Lydia looking at her and gets the exact same feeling she did when she first told Stiles she thought she might be adopted.

It turns out that Malia doesn’t _have_ many options. Her social circle hasn’t expanded very far since her days as a wild coyote. She even considers talking to the biology teacher, Mr. Avery, but if he suspected that she was wondering if she was adopted, he’d definitely tell the guidance counselor.

 _The guidance counselor_. It’s so obvious that Malia almost slaps her forehead when she thinks of it. (She restrains herself, though, which is good, since she already gets stared at enough in math class.) Ms. Morrell knows about werewolves, and it’s actually her _job_ to advise Malia. And she’s definitely not going to be talking to Stiles any time soon.

With her next step planned, Malia can finally turn her attention to trigonometry.

Hurray.

#

She’s actually in a good mood at the end of the day. Well, not _good_ , but kind of peaceful. As she walks through the parking lot to meet Stiles at his car, she’s not worrying. She’s not thinking much at all.

And then she _gets_ to the Jeep, and Stiles and Lydia are already there. Kissing. Stiles has his hands in her hair, and they’re leaned up against the car. Neither of them see her.

It’s like she’s walked into a truck. She can’t move, she can’t even think. She wants to back away before they notice her, but her feet aren’t listening to what she wants, right now. And neither is her mouth, apparently, because without her permission, it says, “Stiles.”

Stiles jumps away from Lydia and spins around.

“Oh, God, Malia,” he croaks.

Lydia wipes her mouth ungracefully on the back of her hand. “I’m going to take the bus.”

“Lydia,” Stiles says, craning his neck to try to look at her and Malia at the same time. But Lydia is already halfway across the parking lot, steady in her four-inch heels. Stiles peers off after her like he might follow, but instead he turns back to face Malia fully. “Malia, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, I never… It was just this one time, I didn’t even mean to, you have to believe me.”

Gradually, a feeling begins to emerge from the numbness inside Malia, working its way up through her stomach and into her throat. Something hot and sour and aching. She doesn’t want it. It doesn’t matter to her if Stiles kisses someone else. It can’t matter.

“Malia? Malia, say something please. Oh, God, Malia, I’m so sorry.”

She thinks she’s going to throw up, if she says something. So instead, she lunges forward and kisses him, her hands in his hair just like his had been in Lydia’s. After what happened the night before, she’s afraid he’ll pull away again, but he doesn’t. He just lets her kiss him, his heart fluttering in his chest like a tiny animal’s. Like prey.

When they’re done, Stiles drives her home, and they don’t talk about it again.

#

Malia and Lydia are supposed to have tutoring that night. Normally Stiles is her ride, but she doesn’t want to mention Lydia to him, now or ever. She doesn’t even know if she should go or not. Part of her wants to skip like she has in the past, and just run out into the woods and stay there forever.

It’s the other part of her, the part that’s sick of hiding in the woods, that pulls her bike out of the garage, rides the three miles to Lydia’s house, and rings the bell.

Lydia answers the door. She’s fixed her hair since Malia last saw her; you’d never know someone had just been running his hands through it passionately. “I didn’t know if you’d come,” she says.

Malia shrugs. “Well, I did.”

“Come in, then,” Lydia says, stepping aside.

In the kitchen, Lydia pulls a glass bottle of Perrier out of the fridge. “Want anything? Water, soda?”

Malia shakes her head.

“What do you want to study? Math? English?”

She doesn’t know why she came here, but she knows it wasn’t to study. For a moment, Malia stands silently in the doorway, her backpack clutched in her hand. Then she says, “Why did you kiss him?”

Lydia sets the bottle down on the granite counter with a sharp _clink_. “Excuse me?” she says, in a voice that could cut stone.

“You don’t like Stiles, so why did you kiss him?”

“I _didn’t_ kiss him, he kissed me. And I’d like to know why you’re interrogating me and making out with him. Because yes, I saw that, along with half the school.” Lydia twists off the cap of her Perrier violently. “And I take it back. You can’t have any of my soda.”

Malia would like to think Lydia’s lying, but she knows she’s not. She takes a step back, on the verge of running away. Coming here was a mistake. She hadn’t even meant to confront Lydia, it had just _happened_ , the way things always happen when Malia acts on instinct instead of thinking things through. She needs to stop doing that. She needs to _think_ about things.

So instead of running, she stops, and she thinks. For a long time, she stands in the doorway and watches Lydia sipping her Perrier and ignoring her. What should she do? What would Stiles tell her to do? What would Ms. Morrell tell her to do? What’s the other-regarding choice, here?

And out of nowhere, it comes to her.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Lydia looks up from her smartphone, eyes wide. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Malia repeats. “I’m sorry I assumed… I’m sorry.”

Lydia sets down her phone and stalks purposefully over to Malia. It takes everything Malia has to stay where she is, because a purposeful Lydia is a terrifying thing. But when Lydia reaches her, she just folds her into her arms and holds tight.

“Oh, honey,” Lydia says. “You are so incredibly forgiven.”

#

“So, you’re an emissary, right?”

Ms. Morrell lifts one delicate eyebrow. “I have been.”

“Right, but when you left the alpha pack, you didn’t lose any of your special emissary knowledge,” Malia says. “You still know all about werewolves and stuff.”

“I do. But if you have a question about magic, you can always bring it to me after hours. These sessions are to talk about you, Malia.”

“This is about me.”

“Then by all means, go on.”

Malia takes a deep breath. This is it. This is where she gets at least one of her answers. She feels like she’s about to jump off a cliff. “Can two humans have a werewolf child? I mean, can someone be a born werewolf with human parents?”

Ms. Morrell clasps her hands. “Ah. I see,” she says. To Malia’s great relief, she doesn’t keep her waiting. “The answer is no. Born werewolves always have at least one werewolf parent.”

That’s okay. It’s okay, Malia can live with that. If she’s adopted, she can live with that. She can. Ms. Morrell reaches out and steadies Malia’s hands, which, it turns out, are shaking.

“It’s okay,” Malia says. “Do you…” She clears her throat, but Ms. Morrell seems to know what she’s about to ask, because she shakes her head.

“I don’t know who your parents are,” she says.

But Malia’s on a roll now, and she’s not stopping until she’s found out as much as she can. “I was born in ’96. Were you in Beacon Hills then? I mean, who _was_ in Beacon Hills then?”

Ms. Morrell leans back, eyes narrowed like she’s trying to see something far off in the distance. “The Hales, obviously. Talia, Laura, Peter, Gregory, and Daniel were all old enough to have a child, but someone would have noticed if Talia or Laura were pregnant. There were other packs that came through, though. Ennis’, Kali’s, Deucalion’s… Lots of werewolves visited Beacon Hills in those days. It could have been any one of them, or any two.”

“Did any of them have blue eyes in their wolf form?”

Ms. Morrell cocks her head, like a coyote faced with an impassable river. “Why do you ask?”

“I just thought it might help narrow it down. You know, since I have blue eyes when I’m a coyote.”

“No, it doesn’t work like that,” Ms. Morrell says. “It’s not genetic. Werewolves have golden eyes until they take an innocent life. Then their eyes turn blue.”

The thing in Malia’s stomach that’s been festering for the past few days makes itself known again. She feels carsick, almost, like the horizon keeps moving on her. Like the world won’t settle down and let her get her bearings.

Maybe Stiles had been mistaken. But Malia’s pretty sure he wasn’t.

“Malia?” Ms. Morrell says. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Malia says, and swallows hard.

#

Stiles is waiting for her outside the office. She doesn’t say anything when she sees him, just grabs his hand and drags him along behind her.

“Hey, Malia, where are we going?” he asks. When she doesn’t answer, he says, “Oh, there, okay, that’s a good place to go.” She doesn’t laugh.

They end up on the lacrosse field, empty at this time of day. She lets go of Stiles’ hand and turns to face him. He looks strange. Hopeful, or afraid, or confused, or… or something. She sniffs, but all she smells is stress, just like always.

“Why do some werewolves have blue eyes and some have gold eyes?” she says.

Stiles blinks fast and opens his mouth, his lips forming something odd and misshapen. He purses his lips and swallows. “You found out.”

Malia pushes him, and not gently. “You _lied_ to me.”

Stile recovers his balance and comes back toward her, reaching to stroke her shoulder. She pulls away. “I didn’t want you to feel bad,” he says. “I just didn’t want you to have to think about your family every time your eyes changed. I was trying to protect you.”

Before she even has time to think about it, before she even knows she’s going to say anything at all, Malia says, “Who’s my real father?”

“What are you talking about?” Stiles says, but Malia hears his heart speed up. Finally, after all these months, she hears it, and she knows what it means.

“I know you know,” she says. “You’ve been weird about it for so long. So just _tell me_. Who’s my real father?”

Stiles’ mouth gapes, and he twitches, but Malia ignores that. Instead, for the first time, she really listens to his heartbeat, really pays attention to his smell. For months, she’s been trying to ignore what she hears and smells from him, because she couldn’t understand it, couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t respond to it. But she’s paying attention now, and she hears the moment he decides to tell the truth.

“Peter Hale,” he whispers.

Malia crumples. She sinks into the grass, letting the dew soak into her jeans and stain them. She’ll be able to smell it for weeks, she knows. She’ll be able to smell it and remember this moment.

Stiles kneels down next to her. He carefully wipes a tear from her face, and that’s when she realizes she’s crying.

“You _knew_ ,” she says. “You’ve known all along.”

“We all thought it would be… I don’t know, we thought it would be traumatic. We were going to tell you eventually, we just wanted to make sure you were okay first.”

Stiles heart doesn’t skip, so he obviously _thinks_ he’s telling the truth, but Malia knows better, now. They never would’ve told her. They.

“We,” she says. “You and Lydia.”

“Me, Lydia. Scott. Derek.”

Malia laughs. “Oh, great. So it’s not just my boyfriend who’s been lying to me, it’s everyone I know.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything. He just holds her, and she lets him do it, while she keeps crying. They go on like that for a long time, with Malia not really thinking about anything except how warm Stiles’ arms are, and how this close up, she smells his aftershave and his laundry detergent more than she smells his stress. But somehow, by the time she stops crying, she’s made another decision.

“Stiles,” she says into his shoulder. “We can’t do this anymore.”

“What?” he says. “What can’t we do anymore?”

“You know what.” She inches her head back so she can look Stiles in the eye. “I can’t be with you anymore.”

Stiles stares at her. And then, to her horror, he begins to cry too. His face collapses in on itself, and his breath makes little heaving noises. She doesn’t know what to do or say, so she stays on the ground with Stiles’ arms still around her, her legs cold and wet and cramping. She watches cars go by on the road in the distance, while Stiles sobs into her shoulder.

When he’s finally done, they separate. They sit, inches apart but not touching, as Stiles tells her the story of her parentage.

“That’s it?” she says. “That’s all you know?”

“Scout’s honor,” he says.

“But what about… I mean…”

“What about what?”

“What about my mom? Is she my mom, or was I adopted?”

Stiles shakes his head. “We don’t know.” He clears his throat. “You could talk to Peter. He might have some insight. I could go with you.”

“No,” Malia says. “Peter doesn’t remember, you said.”

Besides, she doesn’t want to talk to Peter. She doesn’t want to _see_ Peter, ever again. She hated him before, and she hates him now, for making her a coyote. For sharing her blue eyes.

But there _is_ one person left who has the answers she needs. One person who will know whether her mom was pregnant in 1996, and whether the birth certificate Malia still has tucked away in her backpack is the original. And as much as it terrifies her to do it, she knows it’s time. Past time.

She doesn’t want to talk to Peter. She wants to talk to her dad.

#

Malia and Stiles stand facing Malia’s front door.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Not really,” Malia says. “But I have to know. And I have to tell him sometime.”

“You don’t,” Stiles says.

“I really do.” She reaches out her hand. Stiles takes it and squeezes it, tight enough to hurt.

And together, they step over the threshold.

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilery content notes: This fic contains a scene in which Malia attempts to comfort Stiles after a nightmare by having sex with him. Stiles protests several times, and Malia ignores him. Eventually she listens to him and stops before any sexual act has occurred. More generally, the fic also contains nongraphic, consensual sex between minors.


End file.
